Spain has just bought in what's being known as the "Google Tax" which is a set of intellectual property laws that lets news publishers get paid every time their content is linked within search results.

The same thing happened last year in Germany where Google having to strip down its news service to accommodate the requests of German publishers.

While the press has been claiming that this is bad news for Google they are also saying that it is bad for the Internet. The only problem is that it isn’t. Google News is one of the worst things to happen to the Internet.

A world where Google decides what is news is hell on toast. Now you don’t have to be to bright to work out that this is not a good thing. I have worked on two news sites which have been killed off when Google changed its search algorithm and redefined them so that they were no longer news sites and they disappeared without trace. Meanwhile news sites with no original content but are designed to Google’s SEO requirements are given top billing.

This means that Google has far too much power to decide which magazines do well and which fail.

The Spanish law is equally rubbish and favours those old style newspapers who still think they are living in the 1950s. Anything that limits Google’s ability to choose the news has to be a good thing.

New plans being drawn up by Ofcom will mean that ISPs will have to grass up their customers to copyright owners.

The draft code, which is still subject to a consultation period, European approval and the governmental green light, according to the Hollywood Reporter, means that ISPs have to tell their customers of allegations that their internet connection has been used to infringe copyright.

After three such letters in a year, those deemed to be still infringing copyright will have details sent to copyright owners, who will then be able to seek a court order to obtain information about the user’s identity. Ofcom’s Claudio Pollack said that the measures will foster investment and innovation in the UK’s creative industries. We guess he means that Big Content will not have to change its business models and everything will stay the same.

The new rules will initially affect the country’s biggest ISPs – BT, Virgin Media, TalkTalk, Sky, Everything Everywhere and O2. Although Ofcom has wanted to do it for ages the scheme has been repeatedly delayed by block attempts by BT and TalkTalk. When the two ISPs lost their legal appeal against the Digital Economy Act the way was open for Oftel to bring in its cunning plan.

The court ruling does mean that there will have to be some changes. But two companies were successful in persuading judges that the ISPs should not have to foot the bill of enforcing the rules. Ofcom agreed that the rights holders will shoulder most of the costs. However, the price structure implies the more infringement reports the content owners send to the ISPs, the cheaper it will be per complaint.

Anyone who wants to appeal allegations that they have illegally downloaded content will have to fork out £20, which will be refunded if successful. Ofcom said it expects the policy to take effect in early 2014.

With Apple already facing charges that it stole the name iPad from a Chinese business, it now seems to have angered writers by stealing their books.

A group of 22 Chinese authors have filed a claim against U.S. technology group Apple, claiming that its App Store flogs unlicensed copies of their books. According to the Chinese official media, the Writers Rights Alliance petitioned Apple last year to stop electronic distribution of the writers' books and had earlier persuaded Baidu, China's largest search engine, to stop publishing their material on its Baidu Library product.

Nothing happened so the writers want Apple to write a cheque for $8 million saying it was selling pirated versions of 95 books via its online store. Apple spokeswoman Carolyn Wu said that as an IP holder Apple understood the importance of protecting intellectual property, and when we receive complaints we respond promptly and appropriately.

Facebook has dragged the sex social notworking site Shagbook to court claiming that the outfit has been “damaged by the issuance of a registration for the trademark Shagbook.” Shagbook has now filed its own opposition, along with counterclaims, with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Shagbook, in the filing, “denies the allegation that Facebook is highly distinctive as it is a generic term”. It claims that Facebook’s trademark should never have been granted.

Facebook claims that Shagbook site’s name is highly similar in “appearance, sound meaning, and commercial impression”. Its has told the court that the name was adopted with “the intent to call to mind and create a likelihood of confusion … and/or trade off the fame of Facebook”.

According to AP the “Shagbook” name came about when its Shagbook's American owner was living in the UK. He called his “referred to his little black book as his little ‘Shagbook’”. “He was amused with the word ‘shag’, and picked up the name Shagbook.com, all perfectly innocently.”

One of the stranger services that Apple's iCloud is offering is Music Match. For $24.99 per year, it will scan your machine and mimic all of the user’s music files onto Apple’s new data centre.

The music industry's reaction to the move was swift. It said that it effectively would legalise all the pirated copies you owned.

But as Between the Numbers points out, Apple fanboys are allowing Apple the right to scan their system and store the personally identifiable results on Apple’s servers. If you bought a dodgy MP3 and share it, Apple will know who shared their copy and whose copy is illegal and could pass this information on to the RIAA or other music watchdogs who would sue users into a coma.

Many believe that Apple wouldn't do such an evil thing because they are a force of light in a troubled world. But as Apple is one of the biggest music retailers in the world, it is not going to want to protect pirates.

It could be that Apple has compiled an all you can eat buffet of data for the RIAA.

Incentive Capital has abandoned its case against 5,865 filesharers who downloaded the flick Nude Nuns with Big Guns earlier this year.

The entire case was a mess. Incentive is involved in a court battle with Camelot Distribution over who actually owns the B-rated flick. An identical Nude Nuns lawsuit brought by Camelot Distribution, a California company, was voluntarily dismissed three weeks ago.

So far no one is saying why they have pulled out. But it all came on the back of a rough ride that the two cases were getting from the Judge,

Firstly the judge demanded to know why the plaintiffs were suing so many people. The judge also appointed the Electronic Frontier Foundation to defend the rights of the 5,865 IP addresses.

The Nude Nuns lawsuit was among the largest of its type. The fact that it was a porn movie meant that many file sharers would have paid up rather than suffer the embarrisment of a court case.

While Big Content claims that it is taking action against file sharers to protect the poor struggling musicians, it seems that this is not the case.

A judge has given the go-ahead to a $50-million settlement in a copyright infringement lawsuit brought against four Canadian record labels for unpaid royalties. Judge George Strathy of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice approved the settlement of the proposed class action in Toronto on Monday.

Craig Northey, a founding member of the Odds, which had a number of hit singles in the 1990s including “Someone Who’s Cool” and “Make You Mad” was the lead plaintiff. He took defendants, Sony Music Entertainment Canada, EMI Music Canada, Universal Music Canada and Warner Music Canada to court.

While you might never heard of Northey, the music studios are the same people who make regular appearances in court claiming that file sharers were stealing from musicians. It seems that Big Content think that it is its job to steal from musicians.

In this case they admit no liability. But agreed to the settlement in exchange for a full release of the plaintiffs’ claims for use of work listed on what are known in the Canadian recording industry as “pending lists.” These lists, accumulated over many years, contain works for which no licence was obtained and no compensation paid.

Critics have been slamming UK PM, David “One is an Ordinary Bloke” Cameron for sucking up to Google over the copyright issue. The PM hit the headlines recently saying he would like Blighty to adopt US style laws that would create a "fair use" exemption.

He thinks that this will allow startups to copy and create innovative products, sourced from material which might be copyright-protected. According to the Guardian this change was on Google's legislative list to Santa because it would give it the freedom to do what it likes.

Now obviously Cameron does not have time to thing through mini-strategies like copyright law. He has people who do his thinking for him. Who better than his director of strategy Steve Hilton. The fact that Hilton is married to Rachel Whetstone, Google's European head of communications means he knows first hand how important all this is... to Google and at least he does not have to ring up to get a quote.

The only problem with Google's, er Cameron's vision of copyright is that it means that anyone can do what ever they like with content and not have to pay anyone anything. Mike Batt, who once penned the deep lyric, “Remember you're a Womble” said that while he used to be a Cameron supporter, the Eaton school boy has grown up to be deceived by the people whispering in his ear. They have told Cameron a myth that Google could not have started up in Blighty because of copyright laws, when in fact it was because the US have banks that understand the entrepreneurial thinking behind startups.

While it would be foreign for Cameron to tinker with the banking system, fiddling around with the copyright system is doable. Batt said that Google wants to "eat the lunch" of the people who actually create popular works. Did we mention that Batt is the deputy chairman of the BPI, which is the record industry trade body?

The problem with Batt and co is that the content industry has lost a lot of support because of its demands that P2P pirates are crucified every kilometre along the M1 and that they are responsible for the Industry having a bad economic fate. But problems like copyright are never solved by listening to the extremes of any argument – Google's or Big Content.

However whatever Cameron's links to Google the Hargreaves inquiry which is expected to come up with some fair use laws does look like it is about to come out with some fair and balanced ideas. According to people in the know the government could create a fair use review panel to rule over test cases, without the requirement for expensive lawyers."Format shifting" will make it legal to "rip" purchased CDs through computers and on to MP3 players.

Hargreaves looks certain to disappoint Cameron, who is demanding something that will "encourage the sort of creative innovation that exists in America", and of course his chums in Google. Hargreaves is worried that the US has created a system where IP lawyers almost outnumber the software engineers.

Filesharing outfit LimeWire has settled the copyright infringement case brought against them by the National Music Publishers Association.

Music publishers, including Sony and Warner Music, sued LimeWire for copyright infringement last June. All claims brought against LimeWire and Chief Executive Mark Gorton were dismissed following a filing in a New York federal court.

It is not clear how much Limewire had to pay to make the case go away. Certainly it is not saying anything about it. Each side will pay its own costs incurred including attorneys' fees. The music publisher's have released a statement that they are pleased this litigation is over and the final result is “a good result for all involved."

It is not the end of Limewire's legal woes. They are still fighting a case brought against them by 13 record companies. This is due on May 2 and might actually finish the outfit.